The invention relates to a keyboard and a word input method for the said keyboard. More particularly, the present invention relates to the design of a common keyboard which can be used in such electronic products as telephones, computers, telegraphic TVs, and electronic dictionaries, and a simplified word input method used on the said keyboard.
The present computer keyboard uses the keyboard arrangement of the prior mechanical typewriter, the inventor of the typewriter at that time arranged the letters adjacent on the positions relatively far away from each other, in order to decrease the mechanical block problems of the adjacent keys when typing, for example, the letters A and L in the common suffix -al are respectively arranged on the left and right ends of the keyboard; some frequently used letters are arranged on the key positions which are typed by the inflexible fingers, for example, the frequently used letter A is arranged on the key position typed by the little finger of the left hand (as shown in FIG. 1). All of this will set obstructs on the word input of the present computer keyboard.
Also, viewed from the tendency of the present personal computer changing from the desktop-type to the kneetop-type, palmtop-type, and the pocket-size type, and the development of the text transmission of the mobile telephone, the text input of the telegraphic TV, the present computer keyboard, which has 26 English letters, due to the large number keys and the large size, will obstruct the miniaturization and specialization and multiple applications. The present mobile telephone, such as Motorola GL-87C, Alcatel HC800 and the new type Nokia 5100, in which keyboards have already had the function of English letter input , and the input method is to arrange 26 letters on the number keys from 2 to 9. The arrangement is shown in the following table:
And the cursor moving symbol  is arranged on the position of the key # (as shown in FIG. 2).
Another keyboard arrangement, such mobile telephone as Nokia 2010, Nokia 232, in which keyboards are arranged as the following table:
The letters O, Q, Z are arranged on key 0 (as shown in FIG. 3).
When inputting English on the above keyboard of the mobile telephone, the letters must be input in turn, when inputting each letter, the said key must be struck for n times according to the order of the desired letter on the key, the maximum typing number for each key is shown in the third row of the above table. After inputting a letter, the next letter must be input according to the cursor moving symbol (There is no cursor moving key on the keyboard of Nokia mobile telephone series, so one must wait for the cursor appearing automatically). This telephone keyboard and the English input method makes the English input too tedious, and one can not input the words incessantly.
The object of the present invention is to change the arrangement of the present computer keyboard, simplify the present computer keyboard, and design a simple keyboard, which has less keys than the present computer keyboard. The newly designed computer keyboard has all functions, or the main functions of the present computer keyboard, and can realize incessant input, thus can be used in such electronic products as computers, telephones, the TVs, and the electronic dictionaries. At the meantime, the present invention also provides a simplified English input method which has higher speed of English input.
The present invention uses less number (2 to 13) of symbol keys (numerials, symbols or letters) to replace the 26 English letters for encoding the English word, and builds a Database of English words, and selects the most preferred English word encoding, which have the lowest code repeated rate, by statistics of a large number of English words and comparison, and further designs a simple keyboard with less (2 to 13) keys, in which, the code repeated rate is defined as the following:       Code    ⁢          xe2x80x83        ⁢    repeated    ⁢          xe2x80x83        ⁢    rate    =                                          The            ⁢                          xe2x80x83                        ⁢            number            ⁢                          xe2x80x83                        ⁢            of            ⁢                          xe2x80x83                        ⁢            words            ⁢                          xe2x80x83                        ⁢            with            ⁢                          xe2x80x83                        ⁢            repeated            ⁢                          xe2x80x83                        ⁢            codes                                                            in            ⁢                          xe2x80x83                        ⁢            the            ⁢                          xe2x80x83                        ⁢            library            ⁢                          xe2x80x83                        ⁢            of            ⁢                          xe2x80x83                        ⁢            the            ⁢                          xe2x80x83                        ⁢            word            ⁢                          xe2x80x83                        ⁢            encoding                                                                    The            ⁢                          xe2x80x83                        ⁢            number            ⁢                          xe2x80x83                        ⁢            of            ⁢                          xe2x80x83                        ⁢            all            ⁢                          xe2x80x83                        ⁢            the            ⁢                          xe2x80x83                        ⁢            words                                                            in            ⁢                          xe2x80x83                        ⁢            the            ⁢                          xe2x80x83                        ⁢            library            ⁢                          xe2x80x83                        ⁢            of            ⁢                          xe2x80x83                        ⁢            the            ⁢                          xe2x80x83                        ⁢            word            ⁢                          xe2x80x83                        ⁢            encoding                              
Besides, many English words are formed by combination of the basic word elements, thus the length of the English words can be shortened with common word roots in English being replaced by fixed and simplified word roots. According to the said simplified principles, English words can be further encoded, and simplified English input method designed.
In the present invention, the words in the library of English word encoding use the most common 20,415 words, which are concluded by the statistics of the word frequency for thousands of modem English articles and 45 popular English teaching materials by computer. analysis and comparison between the code repeated rate of the most common 20,415 words in the computer and the 200,000 common words, show that the 20,415 words have same code repeated rate as the 200,000 common words. So the said 20,415 words can represent the characteristics of the 200,000 common words. With the help of the longtime computation of multi the high speed computers, using the letter completely arranged method, comparing the English word repeated one by one , an English word encoding of 2 to 13-codes is selected, the said English word 2 to 13-code encoding has the lowest code repeated rate. According to the above most preferred English word encoding, and accompanied with the using frequency of each encoding and the statistics of the English common letter collocation and the word roots, the keyboard arrangement can be compared and optimized, so as to design the most preferred English letter keyboard arrangement, which is advantageous to input or remembrance, the said arrangement may use the present or specially arranged keyboard for the computer, telephone, and all the letters of English or other languages can be distributed onto 2 to 13 keys to achieve a simple keyboard, which uses less (2-13) keys to input English words incessantly.
Further, considering that people are accustomed to using the present keyboard and due to the requirement of some special users such as computer programmers, as a transition, the 26 English letters of the present computer keyboard can be rearranged, according to the above most preferred English letters keyboard arrangement, and according to the statistics of the using frequency of the letters, to provide a simple computer keyboard, in which letter arrangement suits for input by hand, and which has less (2 to 13) keys to achieve an incessant English word input.
The following table lists the times each letter appears and the appearing frequency in the 20,415 words in the order from large to small.
The simple computer keyboard of the present invention, changes the unreasonable letter arrangement of the present computer keyboard, arranges the letters having high using frequency under the more flexible fingers, and arranges the common letter collocation and the word roots according to the most preferred embodiment, which is suitable for the input by hand, and thus it can use the fingers reasonably during the input to avoid the muscle tiring, and can make inputs quicker and more fluent. Besides, the number of the keys is reduced to make the user remember the position of the key easily; by supplying corresponding software on the said keyboard to achieve blind input one hardly needs to move fingers; the above keyboard arrangement of English letters uses the encoding with the lowest code repeated rate to input words incessantly and more quickly; and further, because all of the words inputted come from the standard word library, or from the user""s self-made word library or input letter one by one, it can ensure a correct spelling of the English words inputted, and there is no need to check the spelling after input. Also, it can shorten the length of the words inputted and further in crease the speed for inputting English words.
The common and simple keyboard of the present invention as the computer keyboard, can use less keys, reduce the size of the keyboard, and facilitate to miniaturize computers. By supplying corresponding software, it can achieve many functions such as English input, numeral input, punctuation input, special symbol input, function selection, operation control and other language input; the common and simple keyboard of the present invention is used as the telephone keyboard, besides having such functions as inputting text and sending text information on normal telephone or mobile telephone conveniently and quickly by supplying corresponding chips, it can also make the unification and standardization of various communication addresses by corresponding the digits of the telephone number to the English letter of communication address and electronic mail (E-mail) address or the combination of them, according to the English word encoding; used as a remote controller of the telegraphic TV, the said common and simple keyboard can input feedback information for TV marketing. the said common as simple keyboard can also be used as a remote controller for household electric apparatus; By using the common and simple keyboard, can eventually achieve the unification of such electronic products, as computer, telephone, TV, Fax, electronic dictionary, electronic game machine, electronic calculator, electronic clock, etc.
The following arrangements of the 2 to 13-code simple keyboard include several arrangements with higher code repeated rate (for example, the code repeated rate of the 2-4 code keyboard arrangements is higher than 10%), this is because that aligning with the appearance of the inputs of voice, manuscript and the brain wave, the text input function of the keyboard will become less important. The keyboard will be used together with microphone, manuscript board, and of the recognizer brain wave to input text. Thus it will be worthwhile to integrate English letters on to a few keys in the future.